"Despair shall give me strength—where is the door?
Mine eyes are dark! I cannot find it now.
O God! protect me in this awful pass!"
JOANNA BAILLIE, Tragedy of "Orra."
SEA AND SHORE.
BY MRS. C.A. WARFIELD.
AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSEHOLD OF BOUVERIE."
CHAPTER I.
It was a calm and hazy morning of Southern summer that on which I turned my face seaward from the "keep" of Beauseincourt, never, I knew, to see its time-stained walls again, save through the mirage of memory. There is an awe almost as solemn to me in a consciousness like this as that which attends the death-bed parting, and my straining eye takes in its last look of a familiar scene as it might do the ever-to-be-averted face of friendship.
The refrain of Poe's even then celebrated poem was ringing through my brain on that sultry August day, I remember, like a tolling bell, as I looked my last on the gloomy abode of the La Vignes; but I only said aloud, in answer to the sympathizing glances of one who sat before me—the gentle and quiet Marion—who had suddenly determined to accompany me to Savannah, nerved with unwonted impulse: